This is truly great. Thanks to reader Honeycutt Powell for finding it. (I originally gave the wrong reader credit. Oops. Sorry about that.) It's the 5th annual Emmy Awards. And at the time there were no Emmys for writing. Thank you Lucy and Desi.
Kinda funny that in a post about giving credit to writers, I got snubbed. I'm the one who discovered and posted that clip yesterday. Tim only quoted me in order to comment on the clip. But hey, I'm no Jess Oppenheimer, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you found the moment as powerful as I did.
That was Honeycutt Powell who posted the clip.
ReplyDeleteHoneycutt Powell posted the Desi and Lucy video in the first comment yesterday. Tim was commenting on that.
ReplyDeleteThere'll be no WGA Arbitration hearing on this one. Ha ha.
Smart of them to acknowledge their writers, especially since the Emmys didn't back then. Reminds me of Billy Wilder's great line from "Sunset Boulevard" when Joe Gillis (William Holden) says, "Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along."
ReplyDeleteFor the record, Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Davis and Jess Oppenheimer were nominated for writing in 1995, the first year that the writing awards were offered. They lost to the staff of the George Gobel Show.
ReplyDeleteDavis, Carroll, Oppenheimer and Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf were nominated the next year for a specific episode, L.A. At Last; they lost then to the staff of the Phil Silvers Show.
Carroll & Davis got their last nomination in 1971 for "Lucy Meets The Burtons" of "Here's Lucy." That year, it was won by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns for "Support Your Local Mother" of the MTM Show -- also up that year were Norman Lear and Stanley Ralph Ross for two separate All In The Family episodes. Tough year!
That was a really classy thing for them to do. A real contrast to the tedious and pretentious acceptance speeches now where they talk about "going on this journey" and how "this journey" has changed their life by being "an incredible journey".
ReplyDeleteOops. That was totally my bad. Honeycutt, I have made the correction. Sorry about that. Yeah, even writers don't give credit where credit is due sometime. Anyway, many thanks and apologies.
ReplyDeleteDid Desi also say Frawley, as in William Frawley, who played Fred? So is it Vivian Vance (Ethel) getting snubbed?
ReplyDeleteKirk, early in the clip Lucy comments on being excited for Vivian ( who I assume had won earlier in the broadcast - I'm too lazy to look it up) so their comment was no snub.
ReplyDeleteAwesome
ReplyDeleteYes, Vivian won an Emmy, so she'd had her "moment" that night. William Frawley lost to Art Carney, so Desi wanted to give him credit -- and it was great how Lucy's face lit up when he me did.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rob and Joe. I couldn't make out what Lucy said at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteOn talk shows, Lucy frequently claimed she herself wasn't naturally funny and always credited the writers for her success. She was surprisingly modest about just how much she brought to the table, even with the brilliant scripts she had to work with.
ReplyDeleteThe Video starts at the 2:20 point.
ReplyDeleteSlide it all the way to the left and You can see Vivian get her award.
Honest mistake, and I got a laugh out of the irony. Thanks for showcasing the clip so everyone can enjoy and appreciate the gesture made by Lucy and Desi.
ReplyDeleteA few more mistakes on this page :)
ReplyDeleteThis was the SIXTH annual Emmy Awards, from February 1954. The following year they did indeed start giving an award for the writers, just as Desi wished.
Oppenheimer, Carrol and Pugh were all nominated that first year, and the following, and then one other time, much later. But none of them ever won an Emmy during their careers. Such is the cruel world of awards!
Hold on a sec...
ReplyDelete"Honeycutt Powell" gets his/her nose out of joint about not getting credit for linking to a YouTube clip?
What about YouTuber "sarahlineenterprise" who originally published the clip in 2011 (134,000+ views!)?
Or top commenter "FANoftheLEAFS_RAPTORS_JAYS" who posted more than two years ago: "And very unselfish gesture of Desi and Lucy to recognize the writers the way they did; and I had to look it up and sure enough, Emmy awards for Comedy writing started in 1954" (38 upvotes!).
Here's a catchy apology for all offenders to use in future such instances (with full credit to YouTuber "JRS3013" and content creator "Jimmy Buffet"):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE0Td3L68lU&t=3m46s
Wow. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Two beautiful, talented, class-act people. Filled with vision, humility, appreciation and humanity, their impactful acceptance speech accomplished more in a brief minute than most self-absorbed, chest-beating, eye-rolling tirades by a number of modern winners.
ReplyDeleteClassy people....plus they owned the show and know that future profits depends on the acknowledging the cast and writers.
ReplyDelete"Classy people....plus they owned the show and know that future profits depends on the acknowledging the cast and writers."Gotta quote my Aunt Sadie here, Babalu -- Is that nice?
ReplyDelete"Classy people....plus they owned the show and know that future profits depends on the acknowledging the cast and writers."
Yeah, yeah, that's right -- it's smart to credit your staff-- and Lucy and Desi were millionaires and meanies and all that people say about them is probably true. But lots of people who owned their properties and knew about future profits did far less than they did publicly for their writers ("Here's a candid photo of Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa toiling away in their Manhattan apartment on next week's script.") And you better believe there are those who have the same amnesia about proper acknowledgement today and always will. A little acknowledgement and gratitude goes a lonnnnnnnnnnnng way.
Greg...Allen was the lead writer of his material.
ReplyDelete